me out of your lives but yet are expecting me to blindly trust you in raising my baby?’
The words my baby leapt from his mouth unconsciously.
Charlotte looked at him aghast. ‘I’ll give my baby security, routine. I’ll be the best mother that I can be.’
Beneath her defiant tone, there was a nervousness she didn’t quite manage to disguise. Was she as confident about being a parent as she was trying to portray? ‘Did you want this—to be pregnant? To be a mother?’
She lifted one of the gold chain handles of her bag, the only hint of flamboyance in her entire wardrobe, and twisted it around her index finger, the metal tightening as she twisted once, twice, three times. ‘Not until now.’
‘Why?’
She gave a shrug. ‘I was focused on my career.’
Dieu! This was such a mess. A thought tugged in his heart and leaked out into his chest: this baby deserved better than this. He needed to start focusing on the practicalities, understanding just where they stood. ‘Are you seeing anyone else?’
She eyed him warily. ‘Why are you asking?’
He fisted his hands, a stab of jealousy sideswiping him at the possibility that she was dating someone. ‘I want to understand who will support you.’
She unravelled the chain from her finger, in one fast, furious movement. ‘You’re the father. There’s no one else in my life.’ She paused and vigorously rubbed the red welts the chain had left. ‘I know you might find all of that hard to believe given your social life, but it’s the truth.’
He itched with the desire to reach for her finger and soothe her skin himself. That night she had touched him lightly, tenderly, almost reverentially with those delicate hands. That feather-light touch just one of the many inexcusable reasons why he had broken his own ethical code that he never dated employees, never mind slept with them. Exasperated at his own weakness and lack of honour that night, he said sharply, ‘Don’t believe everything you read in the media.’
She rose a disbelieving eyebrow. ‘I saw a picture of you with Annabelle Foster online over the weekend.’
Yes, Annabelle Foster, a TV news reporter, had accompanied him to a Homelessness charity ball, but they had left early, his driver dropping Annabelle directly home. Alone.
Since his night with Charlotte he had dated a few women, but he had ended each date early, a restlessness making his bones itch as he had tried but failed to focus on his date across the restaurant table from him, images of Charlotte’s vulnerable, tender, passionate gaze when they had made love in his bed leaving him with no appetite. For anything.
‘It’s tiresome to attend functions on my own. I enjoy having company, but that doesn’t mean it’s anything more serious than a night out.’
She considered his answer with a suspicious frown but then, with an it doesn’t matter anyway shrug, swung her bag back to the floor. She gave him the faintest whisper of an understanding sigh. ‘I know this must have come as a shock to you. It did to me. But I want this baby... I want to give him or her the same happy childhood I had, with lots of love, laughter, happiness, certainty.’
All of the things he hadn’t had as a child. Instead he’d had arguments and accusations and animosity.
The worst being the night he’d woken to hear his mother sob downstairs that she hated her life, hated being married to his father, hated being tied down with a child with no way out.
His father had lashed back demanding to know if she seriously thought he wanted any of this, a nightmare marriage, his dreams of university, of a better life, long abandoned as he was now straddled with a wife and child to support.
It was another four years before they divorced, five years until his mother eventually threw Lucien out for punching her new boyfriend. Her boyfriend had caught Lucien stealing his beer and had flung a beer can at him. Lucien, sick of the controlling bully who spent his days belittling his mother, had launched himself at him, long past caring about the consequences of anything he did in life. He had ended up with a permanent scar over his ear and living in a fleapit in Bordeaux at the age of seventeen. But at least there, there wasn’t the constant silent, frightening tension of waiting for another bitter argument to start.
History could not repeat itself. This baby was never to feel unwanted.
That thought hit him hard in his gut, in his heart.
‘So who will support you in raising the baby?’
Her arms folded tightly on her waist. ‘My parents will be nearby. I know they will adore being grandparents.’
Which was something...but a feeling of loss, of not being in control of how his life was changing, of needing to make sure he got this right had him warn, ‘Being a single parent won’t be easy.’
She closed the window beside her and gave a shrug. ‘I’ll manage.’
But would she? He didn’t know her, not really. For a few crazy hours he had experienced a connection with her that had flummoxed him, but with hindsight he had recognised that it had been nothing more than a mutual powerful attraction.
And now she was expecting him to be happy with entrusting her with raising his child. What was the best thing to do? For the baby? Neither he nor Charlotte mattered in all of this. ‘Don’t you think a child has the right to know its father, to benefit from that support?’
White teeth bit down on the soft, tender plumpness of her lips. He cursed silently at the drag of attraction that barrelled through him.
She pulled on the collar of her plain lilac blouse and eyed him impassively before she answered, ‘Perhaps, but only if the father wants and is capable of doing so.’
Fresh irritation swept through him. He set furious eyes on her. ‘You’re making a lot of dangerous assumptions.’
She held his gaze, her mouth now a thin line of scepticism. ‘Am I?’
‘Let me be clear. I’ll make the decision as to my role in this baby’s life. Starting with understanding just how you propose to raise it. Are you going to work full-time? Who will take care of it when you do? Have you thought through the financial implications? Who else in your life will support you? What happens if something happens to you, you get sick or are in an accident—who will care for the baby then?’
‘Nothing’s going to happen to me.’
She spoke with a tremor in her voice. For a moment he paused, taken aback by the fear in her eyes...the same fear and vulnerability he had seen the night they’d spent together. Inexplicably he was hit with the urge to reach out for her again, to pull her soft body against him, to whisper that everything would be okay. Just as he had done that night.
Canary Wharf Tower, a touchstone for the command of commerce and finance in London, was now visible in the distance. Until thirty minutes ago he had thought of nothing but business and stamping his mark as the most successful owner in the global construction sector. He had worked for almost twenty years to achieve that position, moving from labourer to site management and then into operations. Moving companies, moving countries, working, working, working. Acquiring small companies in the early days and rapidly and aggressively expanding those by taking risks,
